Category Archives: Bits of Furniture etc

Invisibly working

honestly

and

This is a piece I couldn’t resist and is the work of cottagekitty333. Wee mousey is very welcome here. He/she looks most put out at being pointed at by my thumb nail – apologies are due obviously.

On another front dust is flying

Just don’t ask

Bustling around sorting through videos – yes I did say videos which we’ve not yet replaced with other formats (or may I say watched in eons) the aim being to thin the whole lot down. I mean, how long have we got to watch them all for goodness sakes? Besides which the player is not going to last much longer either.

Top unit had the videos now squeezed into Potting Shed and sitting on two other bits from local charity shop. Yes, those are cat trays – I find shallow storage trays useful and generally easier to forage around in

Ulterior motive: This shelf unit is from a wool shop with deep box sections and it just so happens it would be ideal for storing delicate mini things in their protective wrappings. The video job is just the overture to the opera entitled “Deep sorting in the Potting Shed”. Catchy title.

I have been working on the brown painted cardboard but have reached the stage of brewing up second and third thoughts and will post more info as and when a more resolved outcome comes to fruition.

More pieces cut to shape and one marked up

with possibilities being tried out – will it work as something or won’t it?

and the loft dormer has gained a shutter which you have to fall out of the window in order to reach – hold my ankles will you, please?

Meanwhile I’ve acquired/squirreled away various boxes (from the usual auction site) mostly glass fronted and in which I’m imagining scenes unspecified. Possibly a kitchen corner, or a garden/shed setting, though for one or two I’ve a fuzzy plan fomenting.

Stockpiling glass fronted ones

My favourite – am hesitating doing anything to this one as it’s so lovely as is

Need to spread more dust about and find long lost items so am about to dive back in.

The second loft sleeping space is for Robert Smyth general house labourer aged 10 years (at present dealing with logs and a large dog in the great hall) and Kit Punt aged 11 years, also general labourer around the Hall but at the moment is in the porch about to knock the hat off a quarrelsome beggar using the handle of his besom broom.

A storage chest

As usual am building bits around and about at the same time whilst the items dry and they all involve this loft space. Their bit of it is also a general storage area for spare items. It needs the odd chest to store some of the older, small equipment out of the storerooms down below and a corner to push in a spare palliasse or two.

Going for cheap, cheerful and speedy

The chest doesn’t need to open, it just needs to sit there taking up space and look mildly interesting, so I’ve gone for a really cheapskate construction from a cardboard box. (I bought a bundle of boxes quite some time ago with thoughts of dressing them as really very small mini scenes but haven’t so far got round to it.)

Recipe:

take one cardboard box of roughly suitable size in at least one of its dimensions in this case it’s the width (approximately 3”)

(top left) The box with its lid is far too big but its width is OK without (top right) . (second row)) The depth needs reducing so chopped it more or less in half from back to front (bottom photo) and then used a piece of the excess inserted to add another face to the construction and strengthen the shape

clad in whatever is lying around that might be suitable – peel off back 1:12 wood flooring is what I’ve got

This is wood flooring with a peel off backing and it has some of the stickiest glue I’ve ever come across on it

Cardboard box with front face clad

add hinges, catches, strapping if wish – using some more painted paper as iron bits and florist’s wire to indicate some sort of catch

There’s a pile of off-cuts from the painted paper used when making faux lead for the roof valleys and they mostly have some useable bits on them so they’ll be used for hinges and iron strapping. The paper is stuff that comes in parcels and I’m loath to throw it away.

If the flooring is used for the lid it’s possibly going to look too thin. If it’s stuck to a piece of cardboard then the edge showing a double thickness will annoy me. The compromise is trying a piece of 2 mm card (example on left of photo ) and see if it can be coloured and patterned to blend a little with the wood planking (example on the right of photo). I’ve used pastels and surgical spirit and added the dots and dashes with a ball-point pen

It’s built with one face open (that is it doesn’t have six sides). It could be useful to have an open face for concealing something such as wiring but so far I don’t think there’s anything more to be hidden up in this area but you never know, so five sided it remains.

The back is open for hiding things

and the usual florist’s wire is in place for bits of a catch.

Outcome

Not very finished at the edges where the cladding corner edges meet but I think I can live with it and the lid still looks ‘hairy’ in a comparison with the smooth wood, but so it goes.

Other coloured card today

Was looking to make a worn wooden door

but think I may have a door that looks like it needs repainting

There is also a doorway at one end (non-opening) to hint at loft space beyond for more items to be kept – presumably someone in the household is sure these things will come in handy someday.

Them there fairy lights
and their wires

I had always planned to hide the wiring for the fairy lights within a wall space on the outer face of the storeroom block, but in this room I didn’t want to lose an inch of the bedroom floor space.

Part of the sheet of planks loosely sitting. There’s wire running in a channel across from the wall on the right to where it lies bundled on the left

The wiring is sturdy and has a life of its own so I’ve taped it gently to stop it running away as it goes onwards under the wall to the next space in the loft

A two plank section is just sitting there on top of the run of wire – just floating around

and holding them in place is a one-legged plank desk surface and the coffer straddling the width of the two boards

Decided on a totally floating floor. The wiring is pretty sturdy stuff and there’s only so much cardboard you can channel out to recess it in before you find your coming through the other side.

This is a particularly strong set of boards with a firm, peel off backing to it. I’m not sticking it down though, just letting it float about.

Going around the room

In the ‘floating’ corner we have a book of hours and a ledger

The bed is a scrap of card on blocks of wood, padded out with bedding (two mattresses). Bedhead is a piece of carved scrap balsa with a couple of fancy corners. The foot is a lolly stick carved about with a file.

One fairy light housed in wood with a candle casing over it. When off, you can see the bits, including some candle grease that seems to have run down and staining above from the ‘flame’

Bedroom over the scullery

(Do click bedor light if you wish to take a closer look at the generalmessy detail of these composite photos, and these in turn should click once more to become unbecomingly large)

Viewing from above. The steps down from the main block are missing here as is a curtain yet to come and one or two other bits of more personal items to dress it

Am working my way round slowly dressing the unfinished spaces. The majority of the remaining tasks are bitty, drying and waiting jobs but it’s a little iffy moving from task to task, filling the waiting time with the remaining fabric work as there’s got to be a limit to how much hand washing this all takes. We’re talking over-washed old paws and really slowed activity here 😉

~~~-~~~

PS:

Curtain prepped and added and step in place. Still edgings to finish around them on the building itself

A cozy but dark view from the inside with the first of the roof slopes on

Making a side table into a linen press

Had a gardening morning and general walk around doing the this and that of life, followed much later on by hiding out in the folds of the internet.

I’d been brooding about a possible linen room for Hogepotche Hall and I’m far too mean to buy a really nice linen press to go in it. (There’s a couple of sites that I’ve previously come across but I can only locate the two designs from Peartree Miniatures. The other was from Minibijou in their Tudor furniture section but I can no longer find it.)

Anyway, I started to look up the history of the screw down linen press and came across a photo of a piece of furniture (full size) on an auction site and there was a sudden ‘aha’ moment and connections were made. As I was looking for some crafty messing about to do that might mean I could skive from the brick laying for a while this might turn into just the thing.

The ‘this’ being the linen press (screw down) with drawers below, and it just so happened that I have about my person a nice little piece of furniture that was currently unemployed.

Could it, with a little of this and that thrown at it, be found a new role in life?

Recipe for a skiver

Take one bedside table

ready to hand and too boxy a shape for what I’d originally bought it

Take one piece of balsa dowel

For balsa

it carves easily

it was the only dowel I had of the right size

Against balsa

it carves too easily

it snaps at the slightest pressure

Take one fine rat tailed file

resting the balsa and file on a good flat work surface, with the end of both overhanging the edge for ease of movement, keep them continuously at same angle to each other

add a dash of willingness to mess about when you should be doing something else

have plenty of dowel ready to play with just in case

The threaded screw was a strange place to start, but I knew that wood joints in any structure I’m involved in were going to be bad, so no extra panic necessary there, and thus the screw part seemed to be the big unknown.

One bedside table, now stained

Approximately the angle of file to dowel whilst turning the wood under the file movement.

Probably more of a lash up than anything else, with suspect joints still drying after which there’s some gentle sanding and filling needed here and there, but here she is ready-ish and loaded.Except for my usual fumble fingered wood working, I actually quite like this. (Ah, yes, the plunger bit at the base of the screw attaching it to the ‘face plate’ is a cut down,old fashioned, bell shaped plastic toggle – you know the sort before all these spring-loaded ones came upon us.

And, yes, the screw really did turn through the whole in the head beam, though it certainly doesn’t now ‘cos it’s glued in place everywhere that looks likely for it.